Story of Waitstill Baxter | Page 4

the yellow-moccasined Sokokis as they issued from the
Indian Cellar and carried their birchen canoes along the wooded shore.
It was in those years that the silver-skinned salmon leaped in its crystal
depths; the otter and the beaver crept with sleek wet skins upon its
shore; and the brown deer came down to quench his thirst at its brink
while at twilight the stealthy forms of bear and panther and wolf were
mirrored in its glassy surface.
Time sped; men chained the river's turbulent forces and ordered it to
grind at the mill. Then houses and barns appeared along its banks,
bridges were built, orchards planted, forests changed into farms,
white-painted meetinghouses gleamed through the trees and distant
bells rang from their steeples on quiet Sunday mornings.
All at once myriads of great hewn logs vexed its downward course,
slender logs linked together in long rafts, and huge logs drifting down
singly or in pairs. Men appeared, running hither and thither like ants,
and going through mysterious operations the reason for which the river
could never guess: but the mill-wheels turned, the great saws buzzed,
the smoke from tavern chimneys rose in the air, and the rattle and
clatter of stage-coaches resounded along the road.
Now children paddled with bare feet in the river's sandy coves and
shallows, and lovers sat on its alder-shaded banks and exchanged their
vows just where the shuffling bear was wont to come down and drink.
The Saco could remember the "cold year," when there was a black frost
every month of the twelve, and though almost all the corn along its

shores shrivelled on the stalk, there were two farms where the vapor
from the river saved the crops, and all the seed for the next season came
from the favored spot, to be known as "Egypt" from that day
henceforward.
Strange, complex things now began to happen, and the river played its
own part in some of these, for there were disastrous freshets, the
sudden breaking-up of great jams of logs, and the drowning of men
who were engulfed in the dark whirlpool below the rapids.
Caravans, with menageries of wild beasts, crossed the bridge now
every year. An infuriated elephant lifted the side of the old Edgewood
Tavern barn, and the wild laughter of the roistering rum-drinkers who
were tantalizing the animals floated down to the river's edge. The roar
of a lion, tearing and chewing the arm of one of the bystanders, and the
cheers of the throng when a plucky captain of the local militia thrust a
stake down the beast's throat,--these sounds displaced the former
war-whoop of the Indians and the ring of the axe in the virgin forests
along the shores.
There were days, and moonlight nights, too, when strange sights and
sounds of quite another nature could have been noted by the river as it
flowed under the bridge that united the two little villages.
Issuing from the door of the Riverboro Town House, and winding
down the hill, through the long row of teams and carriages that lined
the roadside, came a procession of singing men and singing women.
Convinced of sin, but entranced with promised pardon; spiritually
intoxicated by the glowing eloquence of the latter-day prophet they
were worshipping, the band of "Cochranites "marched down the dusty
road and across the bridge, dancing, swaying, waving handkerchiefs,
and shouting hosannas.
God watched, and listened, knowing that there would be other prophets,
true and false, in the days to come, and other processions following
them; and the river watched and listened too, as it hurried on towards
the sea with its story of the present that was sometime to be the history
of the past.

When Jacob Cochrane was leading his overwrought, ecstatic band
across the river, Waitstill Baxter, then a child, was watching the strange,
noisy company from the window of a little brick dwelling on the top of
the Town-House Hill.
Her stepmother stood beside her with a young baby in her arms, but
when she saw what held the gaze of the child she drew her away,
saying: "We mustn't look, Waitstill; your father don't like it! "
"Who was the big man at the head, mother? "
"His name is Jacob Cochrane, but you mustn't think or talk about him;
he is very wicked."
"He doesn't look any wickeder than the others," said the child. "Who
was the man that fell down in the road, mother, and the woman that
knelt and prayed over him? Why did he fall, and why did she pray,
mother?"
"That was Master Aaron Boynton, the schoolmaster, and his wife. He
only made believe to fall down, as the Cochranites do; the way they
carry on is a disgrace to the village, and that's the reason your father
won't let